Paul Prescod wrote
> [...] Five extra pre-defined and perhaps overridable
> entities won't hurt XML in 5 years.
I could live with the idea of having only ampersand and lt defined.
(I don't like amp particularly since for anyone who has done any
physics or electronics, it obviously ought to represent an "A").
Perhaps we also need apostrophe and grave accent. Note that there
is no single quote in ASCII, as ' is an apostrophe and ` is a grave
accent. The typewriter doube quote (") makes the fifth, right?
amp ampersand &
lt left angle bracket <
quot grave accent `
apos apostrophe '
dquot typewriter double quote "
That makeds five; do we also need
gt right angle brcket >
or
ket right bracket ]
for quoting the end of a marked section? (]]>)
The minimal set seems to be ampersand and left angle bracket.
Can these already be quoted with their delimiter names, as
in &#ERO; and so on? SGML allows that. I like that, as it makes
clear why you are ding the quoting, although it's pretty hard to
explain the strange names.
I don't see a need for more than ampersand and lt, and I accept that
some people will prefer the confusing "amp" name to "ampersand".
So I propose a compromise: just two entities, amp and lt.
Lee